DarkBlog theme refreshed for BE 1.5

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Apr 12

Themes

Just finished refreshing my old DarkBlog theme to run under newest BlogEngine 1.5 release. It has been neglected for quiet some time now, I had to add widgets support, nested comments and few tweaks here and there to play nice with new features added to BlogEngine since version 1.3 when this theme was introduces. It looks pretty good with standard “welcome” post, but when tested with my own blog content, some things do not look right. Nothing is wrong with theme though, the problem is content itself - which prompted me to write a note to myself:

Blog content should be generic

If you want your blog content to be portable – and you likely do – try to use generic HTML tags and nothing else as much as possible. What I mean is, don’t use “span class=…” oh, God forbid, “span style=…” inside of your post. Try to stick with standard, generic HTML tags. It will pay off when you decide to change theme or move your content to another blog provider etc.

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DarkBlog theme Here you can download DarkBlog theme for BlogEngine.net. You can also see it live at rtur.net/darkb...Porting WordPress theme to BlogEngine Cool thing about open source is sharing. You give some - you get some. When it comes to themes, th...In the search of mobile theme Largely as a result of iPhone revolution, mobile devices today more wide spread and connected to th...

Comments

4/12/2009 10:15:22 PM #

Maybe my monitor is set too bright, but lately I've noticed darker pages are much easier on my eyes (like the DarkBlog theme).

Probably "span style=..." is more portable than "span class=..." when switching themes -- just because its more self-contained and doesn't rely on a certain external CSS file being present.

Nice theme, by the way!

Ben Amada |

4/13/2009 8:37:54 PM #

It is, but I'd try to avoid any inline css. As simple example, you have text and you set it red because it works fine in your theme. Then you change theme, and red is really no go with new color scheme - you'll have to go over your content and hunt down all those "style=color:red". If i have couple hundreds posts with inline styles - I'm in trouble.

rtur.net |

4/14/2009 12:58:48 PM #

I agree with the general rule that posts should be as generic as possible,but I don't see a span tag with a class to be an example of something that would violate the rule.

The span tag is, after all, generic html. Identifying a class makes it portable among themes since the theme user can decide whether or not to define the class in a css file. If it's not defined, then nothing happens.

The tag can be misused in a way that makes it non-generic. It should be used to identify something about the marked content and should not be used as a substitute for the old font tag. Example: A <span class="red-text"> tag is non-generic and brings display info into the markup where it doesn't belong. But a tag like <span class="important-text"> tag says something about the content of the post. (And that's a big part of what the whole move from classic html to xhtml and css was largely about, no?) A theme maker could then decide whether or not to hightlight 'important-text' in some way that's appropriate to the theme.

robinev |

4/14/2009 8:37:47 PM #

Agreed, just to clarify - I don't think inline styles are evil, but they easily misused and might cause problems or extra work if/when you try to move your content. I definitely misused them and got bitten, not horribly but I think I've learned my lesson.

rtur.net |

4/16/2009 10:02:44 AM #

BlogEngine.NET 1.5 Final

BlogEngine.NET 1.5 Final

deedee.brainstream.net |

4/30/2009 1:05:18 AM #

The darkblog theme is one of the best we found for blogengine. Thanks for the theme.

Internet Zine |

5/26/2009 7:52:09 AM #

I love the fact that the guys over at BlogeEngine respond to technical support inquiries within a matter of hours, sometimes minutes, on their forum. It does seem to be one of the better ASP blog tools out there, however seems to be made for a more highly technical person. There definitely aren't as many plug 'n play themes/plugins..etc.

I tried it out at first for my brand new blog at http://sitanddate.com/blog on the II/windows server, but it was too much of a struggle. I ended up having to learn the basics of php/mysql to go with Wordpress. Hopefully someday BE will be just as big and popular as WP.

Thanks,
DR

NYC Speed Dating |

6/2/2009 6:30:59 AM #

I admit, I have not been on this webpage in a long time... however it was another joy to see It is such an important topic and ignored by so many, even
professionals. I thank you to help making people more aware of possible issues.
Great stuff as usual....

Kasino Deutsch |

6/19/2009 7:49:17 AM #